Losing the popularity contest

The Second Civil War in the US will be nothing like the first. It won’t be great armies and semi-defined battle lines. It will be neighbor vs. neighbor, city against suburb. It will be vicious, and bloody, and mean. Think Kosovo, think Rwanda. Think Kansas and Missouri in the years of and leading to our first Civil War. Think of the western Carolinas in the Revolution. Think of the Vendee uprising during the French Revolution.

There will be one difference. It will be short. Sure guerrilla war will rage on, but unless the military joins in, the government wins. Some of you will not like that position.

Face facts. The police WILL side with the government. They always have. Sure some sheriffs and isolated cops will throw in with the dissidents, but most will cleave to the law and order position. Police have always been on the side of authoritarian regimes. It wasn’t the army sniffing out counterrevolutionaries in Revolutionary France, nor Soviet Russia, nor Germany, China, or Southeast Asia. It was politicians and their police henchmen.

Look no further than the police and their willingness to exercise authority in this pandemic. The police showed up in Wisconsin to force a girl to take down an Instagram post. Cops were taking down license plate numbers at a non-governmental approved church service in Mississippi. How many in those departments stood up to remind their brothers in the thin blue line our rights are not provided by the Constitution, but God-given.

When the next Civil War erupts, the police will be better armed. Every small city and upwards has armored vehicles. They have automatic weapons. They have communications and unit cohesion. The dissidents will have little of that. I don’t care if you served in a Vietnam, or the Gulf, or Iraq. There you were part of a team, and that experience should reinforce the fact that a loose network of snipers, bombers, and surprise attacks can cause havoc and death, but cannot win.

The real wild card is what role the military will take. The National Guard will be key. Do the citizen soldiers side with the Government or with their neighbors? My guess it will vary by armory and by individual soldier. Some rural units will break into the armory and fight against the Government. Others will join the other side. The Regular Army will likely stay out of it.

The bottom line is you may be well armed. You might have a large stockpile of munitions. You do not have drones, or fighter jets or communications or small unit tactics and cohesion. Do you have body armor? Artillery, explosives?  Have you studied small unit tactics? Do you have a network of surveillance cameras already in place in the cities and towns? Do you control the water and electricity? Do you have oil reserves?

Without organization, without support, you are just fantasizing. You are no different than the nut jobs who think California could be a viable separate country. When violence erupts, a majority of Americans will want no part of it. Fight the battles in Congress and the Statehouse.